News came out a couple weeks ago about Raphael Samuel, a 27-year-old Indian man who’s reportedly suing his parents for bringing him into this world without his consent. “Life was imposed on me…. I want to make it a legal right for a child to sue a parent…. Ideally the parents should not have the child. But if they do have the child, they must compensate the child, they must guarantee property for the child, they must guarantee a good…
Why are some Christians more interested in apologetics than others? Do you think you know the reasons? Probably. But only partly. The Spiritual Readiness Project has just released a research report this morning on What Motivates Interest In Apologetics? Read it online or download the printable version. Prepare to nod your head in agreement with some of the findings, and to be surprised at other — especially the two big factors we found that don’t seem to motivate many people’s interest…
I was just looking at a Facebook battle over whether women tend to suffer emotional distress after an abortion. A secular psychiatrist said there’s no evidence; someone else insisted there was. As Christians we are committed to truth. We need to know what we’re talking about, to make sure we’re speaking truth, before we engage in these kinds of arguments. I’m not sure the Christian in this discussion was succeeding in that. That doesn’t mean she’s wrong; in fact as…
Groundbreaking “Lewis-esque” article now available again! Five years ago I published an article at Touchstone magazine that I titled “Too Good to be False,” and which they titled, “The Gospel Truth of Jesus.” Leading New Testament documents scholar Daniel Wallace paid me the compliment of calling it “Lewis-esque.” For quite a long time Touchstone displayed it for free on their website, but now it’s behind a subscriber paywall. The copyright is mine, so today I’m republishing it here. Being five years old, obviously this argument has…
Let’s start by agreeing Shermer is right, as he opens this interview: Humans do seek out evidence that supports our beliefs. We do tend to cement our convictions more than we question them. He’s wrong, though, when he tells Stephen Colbert (at 1:40), “The only way to tell, really, the difference between these true patterns and false patterns is science.” I’m happy to leave the most obvious flaws in that thinking for you to discuss in the comments. For starters,…
Happy New Year! It could be a great one, if we’ll finally wake up, get equipped, and reach out. That’s why I want to ask you to take thirty minutes to watch at least the first half of this video. Dr. Michael Brown and I were talking on his Line of Fire radio program about my Stream article, Church, Wake Up! An Urgent Call to Action. (Also mirrored on this site. The Line of Fire title you see below is for the…
We Christians get charged with believing things uncritically, not showing sufficient curiosity about other beliefs, or about how ours could be true. I’ve got the same sort of question for atheists.* Thinking Christian commenter Benjamin Cain supposes that the God Christians worship is a “human-like,” “monstrous,” “psychopathic,” “jealous, irrational, sadistic tyrant,” waving the equivalent of a “magic wand.” That’s all found in just one single tour de force of a comment. He’s not alone; Richard Dawkins led the way in…
Western society is rapidly moving toward totalitarianism. I never would have thought it possible — yet it’s happening. Christianity in particular is under attack, at risk like never before in our part of the world. I’m not new to these issues, but a recent National Review article by John Daniel Davidson was still a kick in the gut for me. We must wake up. We must rouse ourselves to action. From Davidson’s article: Peter Vlaming, a teacher at a small-town…
I’ve been reading the competition, so to speak — not that there really is any competition with Ed Feser. I don’t agree with everything he says, naturally, but still he’s untouchable as a top-notch thinker/blogger. Anyway, I want to pick up and run with something he wrote on sex and teleology just before Thanksgiving. His point overall was that sex and sexuality have clearly discernible purposes. In other words they’re teleological, meaning that it is of their essence that they are…
